Healing Depression

Healing depression needs to be a well-organized process that involves every aspect of your life.

There is never a single answer to depression because depressive disorders are never caused only by one factor, but rather a congregation of factors.

Unfortunately, many depressed individuals seek a quick fix for depression and they usually believe that antidepressants are it.

However, they could not be more wrong. Antidepressants are only one of the therapeutic tools that are used so that a depressed person can take part in psychotherapy where the real healing process is taking place.

Antidepressants and natural supplements can help you reduce your symptoms, and even in some cases relieve you from them. However, just because you are relieved from your symptoms of depression that does not mean that you are healed from depression.

For example, when you have toothache and you take painkillers, your pain (symptom) is gone, but does that mean that your tooth is healed?

As it was said in the beginning of this article, healing depression is a process and not an intervention and it should be regarded as such. What does that mean?

First of all, this means that there is no magic pill for depression or any other kind of quick fix. Secondly, there are healing depression steps that need to be made in order for a depressive individual to get better and cured.

Healing Depression Steps:

1. If you feel depressed, talk to your family members or close friends about it. Do not do what, sadly, many depressed people do; do not suffer in silence. There is nothing more painful and depressing than suffering without anybody knowing about it. First thing you need to do is to make a support “network” for yourself.

2. Get yourself in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a sanctuary for depression and an important part of depression healing. In psychotherapy, you should get the appropriate support, education about your disorder and tools to battle your depression.

3. Do not self-medicate with alcohol, legal or illegal drugs. You should not even take natural supplements without a health professionals supervision because any substance can be harmful if taken too much or in the wrong way.

4. If you are taking prescribed antidepressants, make sure you are in psychotherapy and that you are taking them as prescribed. There is nothing worse that you can do to yourself than to take antidepressants off and on or to mix them with alcohol.

5. Together with your therapist, make a plan about how to reduce stress in your life and make sure that the plan is realistic. Stress is your number one ememy and it should be treated as such. This means that it should never be underestimated and that it deserves your full attention.

6. Always remind yourself that healing depression is a process and not an intervention. This is important, because if you forget this fact, you could go back to your old habits and the old way of living that caused, deepened or prolonged your depression in the first place.

A very important part of healing depression process is maintaining the wellbeing of an individual that had suffered from depression, in other words, preventing the depression from reoccurring. Unfortunately, many patients believe that as soon as they are relieved from their symptoms of depression, they are cured and they stop the treatment. This leaves them alone at crucial time and sadly, their depression reoccurs.

Depression is a way of living, way of responding to stress and trauma. This is why healing depression also needs to be a way of living so that a person continues his or her life depression free.